A week ago, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer gave a speech urging Israelis to hold new elections and to vote out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and replace him with a leader committed to a two-state solution.
Netanyahu’s American allies have responded with predictable fury. “Schumer’s attack was directed at the people of Israel, because it’s the people of Israel who went and voted. Chuck Schumer had the arrogance and audacity to seek to instruct another nation as if it were a vassal state, a banana republic,” said Senator Ted Cruz. Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic vice-presidential candidate who is currently trying to field a pro-Trump stalking-horse third-party candidate, wrote an op-ed excoriating Schumer, in Lieberman’s favorite more-in-sadness tone. Schumer, he charged, “crossed a political red line that had never before been breached by a leader of his stature and never should be again.”
The alleged principle Schumer violated is to interfere in Israeli domestic politics. “This is a shocking statement that treats Israel differently from other American allies by threatening to intervene in their domestic democratic politics,” Lieberman writes. “In making American support for Israel conditional, Mr. Schumer harms Israel’s credibility among its allies and enemies alike.”
Obviously, Israeli voters possess a sovereign right to select the candidate of their choice. But the United States also has a right to select which countries to support and to what degree. The first point is not the dispute between Schumer and Netanyahu’s friends. The latter point is.
Liberal Zionists like Schumer believe Israel’s long-term interests, as well as the universal principle of self-determination, demand a state for Palestinians. This is a long-simmering dispute among Israel supporters, because Netanyahu’s most important lifetime commitment is to choking off such a state. Netanyahu is so committed to this goal that he pursued a policy of supporting Hamas and funneling it aid in order to build it up at the expense of Palestinian factions who could be credible peace partners.
And it is because Netanyahu’s fanatical one-statism has led to such a disaster that Schumer feels compelled to speak up. Netanyahu is deeply unpopular but has said he can’t hold elections until the war with Hamas ends, which obviously incentivizes him to prolong the war.
Lieberman argues that Israelis support Netanyahu’s war aims. Perhaps so. But Netanyahu’s strategy has also involved a clever game in which he assures his right-wing Israeli allies he will never allow a Palestinian state, pretends otherwise to the Americans, and tries to convince Israelis he can maintain the American alliance.
This strategy has worked. But it may not work forever. The war has brought home the bloody consequences of Netanyahu’s one-statism and highlighted his utter lack of any long-term strategy, unless you think indefinite periodic militarized reoccupations of Palestinian areas (“mowing the grass,” as Israelis cynically call it) is a strategy.
Israeli voters have the right to know that American diplomatic and economic support for Israel is probably not going to last forever in the absence of a renewed commitment to Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu wants them to believe they can enjoy full U.S. support without making any concession to Palestinians. Anti-Zionists would also like nothing more than for Israelis to persist in this delusion, only to have the rug pulled out from them one day without warning.
Schumer is trying to give Israeli voters the benefit of information Netanyahu wishes to deny them. Will they act wisely upon that information? Probably not — the right has had a hammerlock on Israeli elections for a decade and a half.
But Schumer’s determination to warn Israel about Netanyahu’s ghastly misgovernance is not an assault on its dignity or sovereignty. It’s the sentimental act of a true friend.
